Has anyone successfully managed to either learn a language to business proficient level whilst in banking, or made notable progress towards doing so? Or are any of you currently trying and have a routine / minimum amount to learn each day / week?
Please share any tips!
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I usually spend my downtime at work learning the language I’m looking to learn. Nothing consistent though, just whenever I’m free during the day
if you spend 1-2 hours saturday and sunday...eventually you'll get there..it just takes time
Read books whenever you have time, even if you don't get a lot of what is happening, the way you structure phrases and the vocab begins to get stuck in your mind. This helps a lot but eventually try to speak to people in that language and practice your pronunciation. For listening, use podcasts and news.
Read an English translation of the book. Then read the foreign one. That way you have context to compare to.
I learned german when I got to university, can't recommend it enough. I think the best way to go about it is to consistently practice in your free time. It'll suck for a while, but like most things, you'll get used to it. Also recommend putting your phone into the language you're trying to learn. You'd be shocked how much your skills improve just by that alone.
has anyone been successful in learning a language whilst working banking hours?
I work in Houston, so the hours generally aren’t as bad as they are in bigger markets, but I was able to at least get conversational at Spanish in my downtime at the office.
(1) I got Duolingo (mostly just good for learning vocab) and Babbel (I found this more helpful for sentence structure and actually trying to figure out how to speak the language) on my phone, and would just hammer away when waiting for comments
(2) I took a few minutes and tried my best to talk to janitorial staff that came every night in Spanish - they appreciated the effort and one of the guys would even point out mistakes I was making
(3) I got a bunch of Spanish-language kids’ books - think “Goosebumps” or “Harry Potter” level of difficulty - which helped cement everything I learned on the apps and showed a more colloquial/relaxed way of communicating rather than the “textbook” format that I was learning otherwise
Took about 6-9 months, but I’m confident enough to now list it on my resume. There are a lot of English words in a business setting that don’t have Spanish translations, especially in Oil&Gas, so that makes it a bit easier
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